


Faint is the Proper Medical Term

by Waldo



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-27
Updated: 2007-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:33:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waldo/pseuds/Waldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson faints.  He doesn't 'pass out', he doesn't 'swoon'.  He faints.  Because 'faint' is the proper medical term.  He's okay with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faint is the Proper Medical Term

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little random fluff that [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/victoriaely/profile)[**victoriaely**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/victoriaely/) wanted me to write and post. Title is taken from Carson's line in the season 1 episode "Hide and Seek".

Carson didn't like to call big meetings when he didn't have to. It made him feel self-aggrandizing and demanding. So he just asked Colonel Sheppard and Major Lorne down to the infirmary to remind them that all the marines carrying field packs _had_ to remember to sign out whatever they restocked with at the end of a mission. He was coming up short on supplies, which in turn was making someone at the SGC get short with him. He knew he could trust them to play the heavy with their guys and things would be sorted out ASAP.

They were in the back, near the supply shelves talking about the latest and greatest Pegasus rash that was literally turning a handful of botanists green when Carson suddenly leaned heavily on the wall behind him, his hands scrabbling around for something to hold on to.

"Doc?" Lorne and Sheppard both exclaimed together.

John reached out to steady Carson and turned to Lorne, "Go get a nurse or someone." He carefully maneuvered Carson to the nearest bed and helped him up. He was worried that Carson wasn't protesting or insisting that it would pass.

John was rubbing his hand up and down Carson's arm when Amy, one of the marine nurses came back. "Laying down on the job, boss?" she asked brightly as she grabbed a blood pressure cuff out of the basket over the bed. She looked up to Sheppard as she wound the cuff around Carson's arm over his labcoat.

John just shrugged. "We were just talking. Suddenly he grabs the wall, goes dead white and starts to slide to the floor."

"Still dizzy, Carson?" Amy asked as she released the cuff and grabbed his wrist for a pulse.

Carson nodded weakly against the pillow.

"Well, you're blood pressure's a little low and I don't even need a thermometer to tell me your temperature's more than a little high." She stuck the probe in his ear anyway. "How long have you been feeling lousy?"

"It just came on," Carson said, his eyes still clamped shut against the spinning room.

Amy quickly recorded Carson's vitals on a tablet and set it aside. "I'm guessing something viral, but I'm going to have Doctor Biro come check you out. You okay with me ordering a few blood tests?"

Carson nodded, then grabbed the sheets tightly as the movement made his stomach clench miserably. When he could let go, he let one hand flop over his forehead.

"You gonna be sick?" Amy asked from where she was prepping a blood draw.

"Not right this moment," Carson told her. "But I wouldn't count it out all together."

"Alright," she said shoving his sleeve up out of the way and wrapping a tourniquet around his arm. "Let's see what's going on."

Carson hissed as the needle went in and John studied the ceiling. He'd never be able to explain it to anyone, but in an emergency he could handle anything – blood, broken bones, whatever. But in the calm confines of the city, needles and blood freaked him out.

"Okay, I'm going to go call Doctor Biro down. She's on in about an hour and a half anyway." Amy patted Carson's arm where he was listlessly holding a cotton ball over the puncture site.

When she was gone, John pulled the curtain to give Carson at least a little privacy. He sat on the stool and leaned his arms on Carson's bed. "Well this was unexpected."

"Aye, for us both," Carson hissed, still trying to manage his spinning head.

John squeezed his arm and stood back up. He moved to the end of the bed where he began unlacing Carson's shoes. "Something tells me you aren't going anywhere for a while, so let's get you comfortable."

"Okay," Carson whispered, his arm back over his eyes, his face pale and sweaty.

John wished he'd start insisting that he was fine and that he could take off his own damn shoes. He'd learned from Rodney – and, truth be told, his own coping mechanisms – that the more a person complained, the better off they really were. When a patient couldn't even summon up the strength to act fine, it was time to worry. He tossed Carson's shoes under the chair in the corner and came up to stand by his side again. "Think we can sit you up long enough to get your labcoat and jacket off?" That was the first time John had noticed that Carson had worn his gray field jacket under his labcoat. It occurred to him that despite Carson's protestations, he'd been feeling poorly before he fainted. He'd been cold in the comfortable infirmary.

John rolled his eyes, several things clicking into place. Carson hadn't slept for shit the previous night – tossing and turning, alternately tossing the blankets on the floor and hogging them. Then that morning Carson had been running late and had told John to go on to breakfast without him and when he did catch up he'd only had tea and toast, despite the fact that the mess was serving pancakes – something that even military cooks couldn't screw up too badly. Or at least theirs tended not to.

John sighed. "Carson? Can we get your jacket off? I don't think you're going anywhere for a while. Let's get you under the blankets."

There was a long pause while Carson considered the question. After a long while he finally managed a quiet, "Alright."

John shook his head affectionately. "Come on." He sat on the edge of the bed and carefully brought Carson up to lean on his shoulder. "Put your head down," he said as he coaxed Carson to lay his head down on his shoulder. "Close your eyes," he added as Carson began to sway in his grip. John pushed Carson's lab coat down, carefully pulling out one arm then the other. It took a little maneuvering to reach between them and get to the zipper on his field jacket and unzip it so that he could pull it off too. When he'd finally gotten both items off, he put one hand on the back of Carson's head and the other around his shoulders and carefully lay him back on the pillows. It reminded him, perversely, of putting a sleepy toddler in bed.

He stepped up to Carson's head and began gently stroking his hair back from his forehead. He was clammy and sweaty and still showed no signs of being any less dizzy. And now he was shivering. John knew it would take far more work than it was worth to get the blanket Carson was laying on out from under him. Snapping his fingers in a way that told him that he'd been spending far too much time around McKay, John stripped the next bed over of its blanket and covered Carson in that instead.

Carson grabbed the edge of the blanket and after tossing and turning fitfully for a minute settled on his side, curled up, the blanket up over his nose.

John smoothed the blanket once he'd settled, making sure Carson's toes were covered. He then went back to his spot at the top of the bed, stroking back Carson's hair – the only bit of him left sticking out from under the yellow infirmary blanket. His other hand rested on the covers under Carson and John found himself smiling softly when Carson's hand crept out and his fingers wrapped lightly around John's. He squeezed back. "Biro will be here soon and they'll get you all sorted out."

Carson nodded again, though it was barely visible under the blanket.

The rattling of the curtain startled them both and they jumped in unison. "You are determined to keep me from finishing that book, aren't you?" Carolyn Biro insisted as she came in, Carson's chart in her hand.

"Sorry," Carson whispered from under the blanket, not pulling it down and not attempting to open his eyes and look at her.

"You look like hell," Biro said suddenly. She pressed the back of her hand against his temple checking his temperature more in the way of a mother than a doctor. She scanned his chart. "You throw up?"

"Not yet," Carson said softly.

"Guess that answers the nausea question," Biro said making a few notes and then bending over to pull a basin out of the cabinet and setting it within easy reach. "When did all this start?"

When Carson didn't answer right away, Biro turned her gaze to Sheppard and raised an eyebrow. "It was like… I don't know fifteen or twenty minutes ago. One minute he's talking to me and Lorne and the next he's sliding down the wall."

"Hit your head?" Biro turned her questions back to Carson.

"I don't think so," Carson replied.

"He didn't hit the floor. He started to go south, so I caught him before he could go down the hard way." John glanced down to where Carson's fingers had wrapped around his again, he gave him a light squeeze of reassurance.

"Eat anything unusual lately?" Biro was still poking at the tablet with the stylus.

"Only what they try to pass off as food in the mess," Carson managed to get out.

"If it were food poisoning, don't you think you'd have half the base falling over rather suddenly?" John asked, his hand stroking over Carson's head again.

"I'm trying to be sure I don't need to start clearing space for when they do. Someone has to be first in an epidemic. But I think Amy was right about this one. I think we have a combination of a virus and exhaustion. Someone's been putting in a few more hours than is strictly good for him."

John had nothing to say to that. He knew he was just as guilty of working a little more than might be on his schedule himself. He was spared from trying to come up with some kind of witty reply when he felt Carson grip his hand tightly just as he began to struggle with the blanket, trying to sit up and failing twice before John realized what was happening.

He grabbed the basin and set it on Carson's lap as he helped him sit. "I gotcha, I gotcha," He said soothingly as he helped Carson to sit and held the basin still as Carson began to retch.

Biro tossed the chart onto the next bed and quickly ran for a wet cloth since Colonel Sheppard seemed to have Carson in hand. She came back and pressed it to Carson's forehead. "Okay, we'll add vomiting to the list of symptoms and have Amy come back and start a line with a dose of phenergan and some acetominophen – or paracetomal as you like to call it."

She was writing the orders as John set the basin back on the table and took the cloth and wiped down Carson's face. "You got something he can rinse his mouth out with?"

Carolyn came back with a small can of Sprite. She poured a little in a cup and handed it to John. "Not that I think he'll want it, but don't let him have too much at once."

For the first time it occurred to John to wonder why she was simply sitting back and letting John handle the nursing instead of yelling for Amy or one of the other on-duty personnel. He supposed Carson might have said something to her about their relationship. He tossed that around in his mind for a while and came up with the conclusion that he was glad he had, since that meant he wasn't being kicked out and he wasn't being shoved to the side. God knew Carson had been through worse with him.  
Carson took a couple small sips of the soda before nodding that he was done. John helped him lay back down, and tugged the covers back up, rubbing Carson's shoulder through it.

When Amy came back in with an I.V. kit, Carolyn grabbed the basin and told Carson she'd be back to check on him after she ran his blood work. Amy made quick work of setting the I.V. and administering the meds through it before leaving the two of them alone again.

John reached up and turned off the light over the bed. "Better?"

Carson nodded again. John knew he just wanted to sleep, but he was too miserable to actually succumb.

"Belly hurt?" John asked as he leaned his hip up on the edge of the bed near the small of Carson's back. When Carson nodded, John carefully arranged the blankets so that he could reach under it without leaving Carson cold. He tugged up the edge of Carson's black t-shirt and began rubbing warm, slow circles over his skin. "That help?"

"Oh, aye. Thank you."

John smiled at the relief in Carson's voice. "Close your eyes and rest for a while. That phena-whatever is gonna knock you out, isn't it?"

"Probably," Carson said, his voice already slurring with sleep. All at once he stiffened under John's hand. "You shouldn't be here. Whatever it is that I have – it's likely a virus which means it'll be contagious."

John smiled and stretched over to kiss Carson's cheek. "I'm pretty sure that whatever it is you've got… I've already been pretty thoroughly exposed to. So either I already have it and we'll be switching places soon enough, or I'm not going to get it."

Carson knew that there was incubation time and viral load issues to be considered, but he was too tired, and John's attention felt too good, for him to argue.

"You know, if Rodney ever gets wind of this, he'll never let you live it down."

Carson rolled his head enough to give John a quizzical look.

"You fainted. And after all the hell we gave him when he 'passed out from manly hunger'… he's not going to let this go for a long time." John continued to rub soft circles on Carson's stomach, his other hand resting gently on his shoulder, taking any real sting out of the teasing.

Carson shrugged. He'd never had the need to preserve (or for that matter create) any kind of macho image. "Faint is a perfectly proper medical term. And that's exactly what I did."

John laughed. The best way to deflate McKay was to simply agree with him when he came spoiling for a fight. This would be even better than trying to explain how Carson was legitimately ill; whereas Rodney had done himself in by playing with Ancient toys he didn't understand.

"They'll let me go when my fever breaks," Carson said after a long pause.

"Yeah. So long as they don't find anything extremely weird swimming around in your bloodwork." John was still keeping his voice low and his movements gentle. Carson was getting more tired as the phenegran took hold, but he was also perking up just a tad as the acetominaphin did its thing.

"Stay with me when they do?"

"I'm going to stay with you _until_ they do. And after that. You've always stayed with me when I'm under the weather. The least I can do is return the favor." He saw Carson start to say something and stopped him quickly. "And don't you dare tell me it's your job. We both know I get a lot more 'follow up' care than your other patients."

Carson smiled a little, his face now completely lax. John knew he was almost asleep. "I suppose you do."

John leaned down and kissed his cheek again. "Go to sleep. I'll be here if you need anything, okay?"

Carson nodded, taking John's hand in his as he curled up, tucking it between his arms and his chest, almost as if for security, as he finally drifted off.


End file.
